Stop picking on Mr Brock: it’s the silly cow with TB you should be blaming

October 8, 2006

From a comment article in The Times on Saturday........... Wild Notebook by Simon Barnes FOR YEARS NOW, they have been killing badgers because badgers infect cattle with TB. So it was believed, anyway. Now we learn that all those badger deaths were in vain: because all along, it has been the cattle who have been infecting the badgers. This information comes in a report published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a leading scientific journal in the

United States: so this is not some nutter going off half-cocked. The only conclusion to come to is that it has all been the most colossal waste of time, money and good badger lives. What is more, the killing of badgers does not wipe out TB in badgers. It actually increases the problem. This is because badgers live set, serious and secure lives in their vast, rambling earthworks. If you disrupt this life with a bit of well-organised death, the badger population is at once in a state of crisis, disruption and movement: so that they will have more contact with infected cattle than usual. The report is a significant victory for the Badger Trust, which has been fighting an unremitting war against culling, and it is not disposed to minimise its

triumph. “These callous vets who have demanded badger killing,” said their spokesman, Trevor Lawson, “ . . . have undermined public confidence in the veterinary profession’s commitment to animal welfare and severely damaged the profession’s scientific integrity.” Death is always the soft option — at least, it is for those not doing the actual dying. The badger cull is all of a piece with the slaughter of predators that was all the rage in the 19th century and still continues in some places, illegally, today. When in doubt, blame a wild creature; and then kill it. Job done. But anyone who keeps animals knows in his heart that when things go wrong it is generally not a problem caused by something or somebody else. No, it comes down to your own skills and standards at husbandry. Bovine TB is spread by the movement of cattle around the country. Badgers, stable and serious when not messed about with, do not gallivant about the countryside. It’s time for the

culling to stop. Peter H

Try the all-new Mail . "The New Version is radically easier to use" – The Wall Street Journal